1 Samuel Lesson 17
Saul’s Third Failure – 14:46-15:22
Beginning with
Remember the reason for this is that the Holy Spirit wants to analyze
human good. Saul is a man who sits in
the messianic office; God has designed the office as well as decreeing who
shall sit in that office. This office is
a particular office that is going to reflect Jesus Christ. Now without an adequate grounding in the Old
Testament you cannot understand the person of Jesus Christ. These chapters, 8-15 deal with Saul’s failure
to expose human good. We’ve seen how
Saul, the man who has perfect upbringing, he has a good education, he has
tremendous physical strength, he has military skill and all the rest but he
fails when it comes to fulfilling this office because he cannot produce divine
good.
We have looked at Saul’s soul and we have seen that he has negative
volition with the result that he darkness of the soul that dulls his spiritual
perception. Therefore he tends to always
need a spiritual prod from somebody around him.
But he himself seems remarkably dull to seeing spiritual issues in front
of his eyes. We noticed the next stage
in chaos of the heart is the development of a human viewpoint framework. And the result of this is negative faith
technique; that goes out the window, you become unable to use it because you
cannot trust the Word of God to do what it says. Prayer goes out the window for the same
reason. You cannot trust the Word of God
to do what it says; confession goes out the window because you cannot trust the
Word of God to do what it says. All of
these things come about because of negative volition toward the Word in the first
place, the darkening ministries of the Holy Spirit no longer illuminate your
heart to the truth and therefore you begin to have doubts.
And Saul is filled with doubts, and this was the cause of his great
failures. His first failure in chapter
13 was when the army was evaporating, he was standing in the road and he saw
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Hebrew soldiers running over the other
side of
Now why do you suppose that kind of discipline fell on a man who erred
in this way? It’s because of the
principle of the third divine institution.
There are certain principles that apply to the third divine
institution. One of these is the cut-off
principle, and that is that God will allow sin to build up in a family only so
far, and then He will destroy that family; he will not permit that family to
reproduce. Either the family will come
to a generation where the people are so physically deformed they can’t have
children or the people will be in situations where they never get married or if
they do there’s no children; God cuts off reproduction through the third divine
institution because of inherited patterns of –R, learned behavior patterns
develop in the family, they are passed from parents to children, parents to
children, parents to children, and they build up to the point where the only
way God has of breaking out of it is to completely destroy that family. And apparently Saul’s case was in that
situation, where Saul was the proponent of –R learned behavior patterns and
they become very strong, and this may have played a role in the judgment. It doesn’t explain the whole picture, of
course, because of Jonathan. But it does
explain why there was this judgment upon
Then the second failure we saw last time, when Saul just came unglued in
the middle of a tremendous opportunity that he had. Jonathan moved across from the south, Gibeah,
to the north, Michmash. He gook his
armor-bearer and he killed 20 Philistines.
As a result of the initial raid, God the Holy Spirit amplified the
panic. So you had, maybe a small amount
of panic in the Philistine garrison, when the Holy Spirit got through it was
panic, and this panic can’t be explained by the little panic. The little panic Jonathan induced by normal
secondary cause and effect, but because Jonathan used the faith technique and
trusted the Lord for the results, God gave him the results and that was the
result, tremendous amplification. And so
the Philistine army was prepared for destruction.
Actually there were a number of factors that operated here. First of all it was in the hill country; you
have the
But what happened, Saul allowed personal vengeance, feelings of personal
vengeance to overcome and as a result he gave a foolish order. The order was don’t eat. That would be like sending an order to an
armored unit today, go chase the enemy but don’t use any gas. Take your tanks and go after them but don’t
fill up, don’t refuel. And it was just
like that to order infantry to go chase these people down the road and not
allow them to eat. So this was a very
stupid order on the part of Saul because it violated a principle of military of
war which is called the principle of pursuit, namely that when you have the
advantage on the enemy you continue to pursue, pursue, pursue, as fast as you
can until you destroy them because you’ve got them in a vulnerable
position. Saul violated that principle
and as a result, as we wound up last week, we saw in
Some people handed in some questions that pertain to this second
failure. The first question is
this: Could Jonathan have relieved Saul
of his office since Jonathan was the legal heir and a spiritual leader around
verse
So here we have Jonathan seemingly making this statement and you wonder
why, for one thing, he couldn’t have taken over the army. He could not have
taken over the army, and this is the answer to the first question, because to
take over the army he would need prophetic designation. To take over the army would make him king and
a king cannot proclaim himself king apart from a prophet. Remember what we said, who was the prophet
that must ordain the king? It must be
Samuel; Samuel is the king-maker, the prophets are always the king-maker. This is why the Gospels do not open with the
birth of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, they Gospels open with John the
Baptist, not Christ. Why? Because John the Baptist is a prophet and
there must always be a prophet to designate Christ. Before Jesus Christ comes again to this earth
and to this planet God will raise up two prophets, according to the book of
Revelation, and they will announce to the entire globe that Jesus Christ is
coming, and there won’t be somebody in a white robe trotting off like the
Millerites in the 19th century or something. These will be people with their heads screwed
on who will be normal intelligent speaking people who will give reasons why and
they will act as living prophets, whose words will be the inerrant Word of God. So both at the First and Second Advents of
Jesus Christ, Christ is preceded by prophets because the model is given to us
in the Old Testament.
The Old Testament kings could never be king apart from a prophetic
designation. Why? Because the prophet had to anoint him. The word “anoint” is Mashach, and this word, Mashach
is the word from which we get Messiah.
That’s what Messiah means, which of course translated into the Greek as Christos. So here actually is the title of Christ,
that’s not His last name, that is His title.
It is Jesus the Christ. It’s not
Jesus Christ, it is Jesus the Christ.
Jesus fills the office, so Christos
is the Greek translation of Mashach
and Messiah. And the title itself
designates a prophetic king-maker, somebody has to do the anointing. Right?
Who? The prophetic
king-maker. So Samuel anoints Saul;
Samuel anoints David; Nathan anoints Solomon, Elijah anoints various kings, and
so does Elisha. So you always will have
a prophetic anointer there because that’s what the office means, the anointed
one, so obviously if Christ is the Christ then He’s got to be anointed by
somebody. It’s very simple and the
principle is brought out from the Old Testament.
All right, this is the reason why Jonathan could not assume command at
this point. The next question says: At
the first of the service you said a believer that violates or usurps the
authority of a leader is a bum; isn’t that exactly what Jonathan did in 1
Samuel 14:29. It would seem that
Jonathan would surely die for discipline for defying Saul’s authority in front
of the army. Even though Saul was insane
he was still king and because he held the office he was still due the respect
of the office. This is a legitimate
point about Jonathan. The author of 1
Samuel, who was a prophet, does not make this claim about Jonathan because the
author is giving you a biography of Saul, not Jonathan. However, we will have to confess at this
point that Jonathan does things here that we would not consider to be too in
line with the Word.
However, here’s the thing to watch.
The father/son relationship has deteriorated tremendously. Twice during this thing the son never knows
what his father is doing and the father doesn’t know what his son is doing and
the breakdown of the father/son relationship is due to the fact in this case of
the father being on negative volition and the son being on positive
volition. Now it can work in reverse,
many cases where the father is on positive volition and he has a rebellious
son. Solomon, for example, was at one
point on positive volition and he had a rebellious son called Rehoboam, and
Rehoboam took the throne in 930 BC, went into a violent civil war that almost
destroyed the nation. So this can work
either way but when you have two people in the same house operating on two
different spiritual frequencies you’re going to have pressure. And the breakdown of the second and third
divine institution’s given here between, in this case Saul and his son,
Jonathan, is a testimony to what happens in the third divine institution when
you have spiritual anarchy. You cannot
have a home that is unified when you have this in the home. So it goes without saying that we have here a
very sobering reminder of the sanctity of the second and third divine
institution’s, marriage and home.
Then finally a third question: Saul was with the grandson of the dead
Eli…. Now Eli was the priest, you
remember, and remember also to get this question, chapter 14:19, remember Saul
went up to the priest, Ahijah, and he said to Ahijah, look, I want to find out
the will of God, and then the situation got very panicky and so Saul said never
mind, he withdrew his hand, he said never mind, I can’t wait for the will of
God, I’ll just go on. This is like his
first failure. Now the question is,
since Saul was with Ahijah and Ahijah was a grandson of the dead Eli and the
son of dead Phinehas, now if Ahijah was asking the ephod, Saul says [can’t
understand words] it would seem that with such quality advice that he was sure
not to get from Ahijah, from spiritual ineptness, Saul, like Patton, was
authorized a deviation from the established battle plan. The answer to this is very simple: the ephod
here that is mentioned is a direct line to God and has nothing to do with the
advice that would be cranked out by Ahijah, he’s just holding the phone. And so in this case you cannot apply things
to World War II or by which you would see normally in the sense of a counseling
situation. This is not a normal
counseling situation, this is sort of getting on the hot line to God and he’s
going to get an order, and it doesn’t depend on the priesthood.
This, by the way, is a very important principle because the doctrine of
inerrancy in Scripture says that I don’t care who wrote Scripture, a Martian
could have written the Scriptures, that doesn’t bother me in the least. What bothers me is that when the product is
finished it is the literal Word of God period, as though God dictated it. Now of course we care who wrote it because if
Jesus said Moses wrote Genesis we have to believe Moses wrote Genesis. But my point is that the channel God uses to
write Scripture is not always a nice sanctified pure channel, but the result of
what comes out the other end is pure and that’s the doctrine of inerrancy.
Now we go to 1 Samuel 14:47 to pick up the third failure of Saul; we’ve
seen two failures, the discipline for his first failure was the loss of his
army and the rejection of himself as dynastic ruler of Israel; the discipline
on him for his second failure was the loss of opportunity to completely clobber
the Philistines. Now we finally come to
14:17 and the third failure and the final one in this section of the book.
Notice, verses 47-52 form a summary statement. Sometimes you’ll get in a discussion about
God’s Word with someone and they’ll say there are contradictions in God’s Word.
And we have a few professors on the faculty that enjoy doing this and every
time they do it they just show their own stupidity because they do not show any
understanding how a Jew would have read the text. Why?
When Hebrews write history they always put summary statements first, and
after they put the summary statement, then they give you the details of the
statement. Thus, there is no conflict
therefore between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2, as many of you have been told in
university classrooms; it’s simply not true.
It is because Genesis 1 is a summary of the seven days and Genesis 2 is
a detail of the sixth day. And there’s
absolutely no conflict. And the same here, we have these verses refer to the summary
of Saul’s entire life, from the time that we left him at Gibeah, all the way
down until the time that he is approaching the end where David is going to be
king. So during this interval of his
life it’s all summarized in a neat little package beginning at verse 47.
Verse 47, “So Saul took the kingdom over Israel, and fought against all
his enemies on every side,” now the Hebrew word for “kingdom” is important so
you won’t be misled. Again we have to be
careful because some people go and oh, there’s a contradiction. Oh no there isn’t, all you have to know is a
little Hebrew. “Kingdom” is a noun that
is a translation of two Hebrew words.
One looks like this and you don’t even have to know Hebrew to see that
they’re different. One is maluka and the other malaka, there’s another letter in there,
that’s called a Vav, this is one of the smallest letters in the Hebrew
alphabet, the Vav is in here to designate the fact that this noun refers more
to the office; both are translated “kingdom” in the English, here’s the
trouble. But maluka emphasizes the office, where as the other one the realm over
which the office controls. Now these
aren’t hard and fast definitions but the two words tend to split in these
directions.
Now the word translated “kingdom” in verse 47 is maluka, not malaka, and
the reason is that the emphasis is going to be on the office, not the realm
over which Saul reigned. Now if you remember that you’ll avoid this
criticism that there’s a mistake in God’s Word.
There’s no mistake in God’s Word.
What the emphasis is going to be on is that Saul is going to lose his
office; the realm over which he reigns, however, is not going to be lost, it’s
going to be passed on to David, and in fact Saul is going to sit on the throne
for many years. So there’s no malaka lost, there’s just a maluka that’s lost here.
Now let’s look at this; it says he took the maluka, or he “took the office over Israel.” Now this indicates, obviously, the word
“take” means that he occupies this office and the proof that he occupies the
office is given in the rest of verse 47; that’s why you have the summary of all
the battles. Those are the empirical
evidences that the writer of this book says see, Saul did function in his office. [“so Saul took the kingdom over Israel, and
fought against all his enemies on every side, against Moab, and against the
children of Ammon, and against Edom, and against the kings of Zobah, and
against the Philistines; and wherever he turned himself, he defeated them.”]
Now in verse 48 it mentions, “And he gathered an army, and smote the
Amalekites, and delivered Israel out of the hands of them that spoiled
them.” Now that is one event to be
summarized with the rest of the events of verse 47, but the content of verse
48, the battle of the Amalekites is summarized here in one verse, and then will
be expanded in chapter 15. So whereas
verse 48 appears to talk about a battle of the Amalekites before you get to
verse 1 of chapter 15 there are not two battles of the Amalekites. There is just one and it’s referred to in two
places, in verse 48 you have a summary,
and beginning in chapter 15 the author, having given you the summary, having
given you the overall outline of history, now returns to a detail of that
history and says look, I’ve told you this, this, this and this; I’ve told you
seven things about Saul, now I want to go back to item number five and I want
to expand. So chapter 15 is an expansion
of verse 48.
And then verse 49 gives certain biographical information about Jonathan
and the only two names you want to remember there, first Jonathan, and the last
one, his daughter, Michal. And she is
going to be one of David’s wives and she is going to inherit the learned
behavior pattern from her father and she is going to have a horrible marriage
with David. David never got along with
this woman, he loved her very dearly but the thing that broke up their marriage
was this girl inheriting things from her father. Her father was a screwball spiritually and
she was a screwball spiritually. And
we’re going to see a crisis scene later on, after they’re married, and David
does something and this woman just comes unglued, she goes into a tantrum. Michal is going to be one of these girls
that flies into a tantrum at something David’s going to do and it just about
tubes the whole marriage. Just remember
who she’s the daughter of and it will explain her behavior later on. That’s why you young people when you date,
always take a good look at the parents.
[“Now the sons of Saul were Jonathan, and Ishvi, and Malchi-shua; and
the names of his two daughters were these: the name of the first-born, Merab,
and the name of the younger, Michal.”]
All right, verse 50-52, this is another summary of the entire reign of
Saul and verse 52 says, and this is a deliberate editorial point about what we
have just seen in Saul’s second failure.
Notice what happens, verse 52, “And there was sore war [hard fighting]
against the Philistines all the days of Saul;” why do you suppose the writer
makes that the last point? Do you know
why he makes it the last point? Because
he is essentially saying by that look, don’t you see, Saul had the opportunity
to totally rid himself of the Philistine menace and through his spiritual
stupidity he lost the opportunity. And
that was it.
Now chapter 15 we concentrate on verse 48 in an expanded form. The first three verses give the command. So let’s break up the first three verses and
we’ll probably get halfway through the chapter, there’s a lot in this
thing. The first three verses is the
prophetic command; verses 4-9 is the third failure, and verses 10-26 deals with
the confrontation between Saul and Samuel.
These are the first three parts of chapter 15.
Notice, when we went through Joshua, what was always first in Joshua? The order from God, go into battle; second,
what he did; third, they did it. And the
same order is followed here. The same
order is followed here because chapter 15 now introduces us to holy war. This is dedicated to all pacifists that came
in accidentally. We’re being introduced
to one of the most bloody forms of war, a war which, by the way, is blessed and
ordained of God, and in which case you’re going to watch human good. In fact, if there are some pacifists here you
area going to see yourself in the person of Saul, because Saul is full of human
good, he is full of a system that says I like those things which are attractive
in life, I like all the (quote) “moral, ethical” things but when it comes to
the narrow spiritual commands of the Lord in my life, that is second
place. And we’ll watch how human good
does not like war.
Now please understand, no one likes war.
The point, however is that in the fallen world, since Satan is the Lord
of it, there’s only one means of peace and that is to have a strong military
and a strong nation that is willing to fight to win war and not just play
games. In a fallen world this is the way
it is. Now if you don’t believe me, just
read history and ask yourself which nations have remained free. And you say well Switzerland remained free
and they don’t have a big army. But are
we surrounded with the Himalayas to 25,000 feet? The Swiss have an excellent natural barrier,
they have never had to worry about invading armies; all the Swiss have to do is
just get out and roll rocks, so they have an excellent national barrier, and
even in today in times of war, with aerial weapons the way they are the Swiss
still have a tremendous natural barrier.
The Swiss are an exception to the rule.
But every other nation on the surface of the earth that’s had peace for
a long time has been a nation that is strong, or has been a nation that existed
in an era of history where other nations took the burden of peace, such as
times when the British imperialism colonized the world and maintained peace on
a worldwide basis. So peace is always
brought about this way.
Chapter 15 is important for world history because if the man that I’m
going to quote is right, this chapter explains one of the great mysteries of
ancient history? Why did the new kingdom
of Egypt arise when it did. We’re going to deal with that, it’s tied in with
verses 4-5. But let’s look at verses 1-3
first. Here is the prophetic command
that God gives the armies of Israel.
Verse 1, “Samuel also said unto Saul,” now notice who’s telling who and
who’s giving who the orders? The prophet
gives the king orders, the king doesn’t give the prophet orders. And he says, “The LORD sent me” except in the
Hebrew he says “me He sent,” the pronoun “me” is set first in the sentence to
emphasize the fact that Samuel was saying I am the issue here, not you, I am
the issue. This is tremendously strong
and very well emphasized in the Hebrew text.
Why is this? “The LORD has sent
me to anoint you to be king over His people, over Israel; now, therefore,
hearken thou to the voice of the words of the LORD.” Now here is where the critics of the Bible is
always in a hotbox. I’ve never yet been
able to discuss this with someone who had a very highly critical view of
Scripture who was at all comfortable with the logical result of verse 1, or
these kinds of verses. Here’s why. Here you have… let’s pretend we are just
saying look, whether the Bible is right or wrong, just look at what the text is
saying first, then we’ll discuss whether it’s right or wrong.
What does this text say? The text
is saying that Samuel walks up and says listen, I am the issue here. Now do you know who he’s addressing? The head of the nation. I am the issue and you will now listen to the
words of God. Now the audacity of a
human being coming up to somebody and say you listen to me and you will hear
the words of God. To say that that
person is not who he claims to be and is not a real vital living prophet is
tantamount to saying the man is mentally ill.
Look, he must be, anybody that has the audacity to say you listen to me
because I have the words of God, now either he must have the words of God or
he’s a nut. One or the other but you
can’t sit here and read through verse 1 and some to some fluffy, liberal type
explanation, well Samuel had some sort of experience and out of the experience
he got the idea that God spoke to him and all the rest of it. There’s just no room for that kind of stuff. You might as well just say the guy’s crazy,
the text is wrong, or this literally is the Word of God. There is no other option. So Samuel comes to Saul and he establishes
his prior authority. This is very
important because of what’s going to happen later on in the chapter. He establishes his authority, he gives the
order.
Now verse 2, the order. “Thus saith the LORD of armies,” the word
“hosts” means armies, “I remember that which Amalek did to Israel, how he laid
wait for him in the way, when he came up from Egypt. [3] Now go and smite
Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; for slay
both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.” The command to go and smite Amalek is related
to something in history.
Now we have to go back and remember the divine institution’s. Divine institution four is government, that
is justice; it is always a result of the fall.
One of the institutions is what I call the fifth one, I’ve divided the
fourth and fifth up here for clarity, the fifth divine institution is tribal
diversity. Now this is very important;
this is the farthest from American mentality but when God views history he
views it from the standpoint of tribes.
Probably many of you can trace your genealogy back three or four
generations, maybe you parents come from Germany of Scotland or Ireland or
England somewhere and you can trace your genealogy back. That is your historical identity as far as
God is concerned. America is a rather
unique nation because we are a melting pot of many different tribes or many
different historical things. And here we
have Amalek.
Now Amalek was a tribe that occupied the southern part of Palestine,
it’s a mysterious group of people.
Here’s a map, here’s the Nile River delta and here’s the southern end of
the Dead Sea; when Israel came out of Egypt, they crossed through a miraculous
deliverance, and when they got out here they were met with this strange group
of people called Amalek. Who the
Amalekites were has always baffled scholars.
The reason the identity of the Amalekites has always baffled scholars is
because they are so large, so numerous.
Turn back to Numbers 24:7 and I’ll show you why this is a very difficult
thing to talk about and really know where they are located in history.
In Numbers 24:7, Balaam is making a prophecy to Israel; the prophecy is
of the greatness of Israel. The prophecy
is of the numerical growth of Israel.
And when he goes to compare Israel, what does he compare her to in verse
7, “He shall pour the water out of his buckets, and his seed shall be in many
waters, and his king shall be higher than Agag,” now Agag was the first king of
the Amalekites. These Amalekites, then,
were the greatest nation in that day.
Now here’s the mystery: Scripture, from the end of the Exodus… from the
end of the Exodus, crossing the Red Sea, all the way down to David, never
mentions the existence of Egypt. Not
once; all this time it’s back to the old Egypt that we came out of, but a
contemporaneous reference to Egypt is totally lacking in the Word of God for
hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
And this does not fit with most models of ancient history because you’ve
got some 500 years where Scripture goes on and on and on and on and we never
have any interaction with Egypt. Where
is Egypt? All this during this time most
historians will say it’s the new kingdom of Egypt, when Egypt was at its
glory. And yet we don’t have one
reference in any of the texts; something is happening. The key is given for us in these
passage. This passage shows that at the
time in which Balaam uttered his prophecies the greatest nation was Amalek, not
Egypt. So Egypt, we must conclude, was
destroyed by the Exodus, leaving Amalek.
Now who are these Amalekites?
Most scholars tell you they are a bunch of Arab tribes wandering around
in the wilderness. Well, isn’t it funny
that a little Bedouin Arab tribe trotting around on their camels is going to be
used as the symbol for the great power of coming Israel? And why would Israel, with two or three
million people be afraid of a group of Arabs on camels? What is happening here. Something is not too well understood.
Come back to 1 Samuel 15 for a minute; you’ll see something else that is
most interesting about this. By the way,
the reason for this, Amalek wages war on Israel and God curses Amalek and says
I’m going to eliminate you from history, so the two verbs in verse 3, “go and
smite” this tribe, but it’s in the singular because of the tribal continuity
through history. “Go and smite Amalek,”
and the word “utterly destroy” is charam;
this we met in the book of Joshua charam
is a word that means to dedicate something, it is the word for holy war in the
Old Testament. You say well I thought
that was the place where they kept all the girls. Well it was, and it was called a harem
because of that, because a king would keep all his girlfriends here and he’d
draw a circle around and say un-huh, nobody else, me. And the drawing of the circle was a
dedication that that was given to the king.
And so that’s we have the word “harem” which is.. that’s not an English
word, that’s a transliteration of the Hebrew.
Now the charam that was used
for the king’s girlfriends was also used in holy war. And when a city was to be attacked, you have
a city out here and the Israelites were to attack it, if the prophetic order
came down, “charam it,” that meant
that everything in that city had to be destroyed. They could not take anything for plunder,
they could not take anything to dedicate to the Lord, they could not take any
material things out of it in any way, shape or form, it was banned, it was
dedicated to God and must be destroyed, incinerated on the spot. So this is the order that comes down, and
this is the part of the order that Saul’s going to violate, the charam part of the order. And the words “spare them not is emphasized
to the military, because these people are men; just think of the order that’s
been given. And think of the blood and
the horror, these men must go into that city and they must slaughter women,
they must slaughter babies, they must slaughter animals, dogs, cats, oxen,
anything they see, any living thing within the boundaries of that must be
slaughtered, completely totally.
This is what has led the liberals to say the God of the Old Testament is
a cruel God. Oh no He isn’t because the
principle of charam produces freedom
in history. We would not be able to sit
here tonight if God had not conducted holy war against apostate
civilizations. And whenever, remember
the fifth divine institution, breaks the world up as the hold of a ship, into
various compartments, the Titanic was supposedly constructed this way except it
didn’t work too well. But the idea was
in naval architecture to construct water tight compartments in the hull of a
ship so that if one of these compartments got a hole it would fill with water
and the other compartments would obviously be full of air and low density, the
average density of the vessel would not exceed water and it would continue to
float.
Well that’s the principle in naval architecture and that’s the principle
of the fifth divine institution, tribal diversity. God has allowed various races and so on to
persist in history and He plays one off against the other and occasionally one
race will develop negative volition on a tremendous scale so that the men,
women and children become defiled with –R learned behavior patterns and they
become essentially cancerous, and like cancer they must be eliminated or the
rest of the body is destroyed. So God
must perform surgery and the surgery is called holy war. Now not all wars in the Bible are holy wars;
this is a rare time when the full power of holy war come in. So in the light of the last part of verse 3 the
tremendous order, the verb “spare them not” means don’t show any mercy to them,
knowing that it would have been the average tendency of a soldier to show
mercy, contrary to what the peaceniks always like to say. Some of the most merciful people in the world
are military and some of the most militant, awful hating people you’ll ever run
across are pacifists, so-called. The
most vicious people I’ve ever run across are pacifists. And some of the most wonderful people I’ve
ever met are people in the service because military people generally have a
feeling of responsibility and they’ve been forced to develop some chokmah, whether they’re believers or
not, just by their job, by their structure and training. So here we have an order given to them to
destroy.
Now we’ve got to find out what is happening. Keep in mind the remarks I gave you on Agag
and the Amalekites back in the Exodus generation. Now verses 4-5, here’s the mystery. “And Saul gathered the people together,” now
this isn’t right after the Philistine fiasco of chapter 14, this is many years
later, “Saul gathered the people together, and numbered them in Telaim,” now
all we know about that place, it’s in the southern part of Palestine, it hasn’t
been located yet in archeological research but it’s somewhere in the southern
Judean area. And whatever it was it must
have been something fantastic because look at how many men Solomon amassed in
that one area, two hundred and ten thousand men to go slaughter the
Amalekites. Now don’t you see the
numbers are all off again, if the Amalekites are just a simple Bedouin tribe of
a couple dozen Arabs chasing camels. It
doesn’t make sense that Saul is going to run 210,000 men after these
people. Not only, but to a city, verse
5, a city of the Amalekites. This is
always one of the great mysteries, who are these strange Amalekites. [“And Saul gathered the people together, and
numbered them in Telaim, two hundred thousand footmen, and ten thousand men of
Judah. [5] And Saul came to a city of Amalek, and laid wait in the valley.”]
Now at this point I am very, very sympathetic to the work of Immanuel
Velikovsky who wrote a book called Ages
in Chaos, in which he argues that history has been misinterpreted by 600
years. Here’s the way Egyptian history
looks. The middle kingdom, as it usually
looks, down to about 1200… [tape turns] … the new kingdom, starting about 1800
or 1700, and in between here you have the dark ages in Egypt. Now that is collapsed by modern scholarship
to some 200 years, and the Exodus, therefore, at 1400 comes right smack in the
middle of the new kingdom and you can’t explain what is happening, why don’t we
have any news of Egypt.
Well Velikovsky says what is really the case is not that at all but that
the middle kingdom came down to the year 1440 and it was the Exodus that
destroyed Egypt. And you have the dark ages
okay, but the dark ages aren’t any 200 years long, they are actually 600 years
long, almost 600 years, and they come down to the time of Saul. Saul is the man who destroys the dark ages
that fell over Egypt and his choice of doing it is this raid on the city, and
what is the city. The Hyksos, these are
the people that ruled Egypt, they were the most cruel people in the ancient
world, they would never take prisoners, the Hyksos would ride into an area,
first of all they had a very cruel system of invasion. They would, like the Midianites in the book
of Judges, wait until harvest time and then they’d get their cattle in front of
them and they’d drive their cattle ahead of them with their soldiers behind the
cattle, and they’d just come in stampeding across fields, destroying
everything. They never built a
civilization apparently, because they just loved to destroy. And some of the Hyksos cites that have been
dug up, all the skeletons that are found, the hands are gone and the feet are
gone and the head are gone. This
apparently was a standard method they had of dealing with captives, they’d chop
their head off, chop their hands off, chop their feet off. And everywhere the Hyksos went there was a
reign of terror and these were the people which correspond remarkably well to
the Amalekites. And the Amalekites in
the Bible, Velikovsky would argue, that these Amalekites and the Hyksos are
exactly the same group.
Now the Hyksos were known to have a large city off here on the frontier
called Avaris, and at Avaris they had a fort, and in the fort they had 240,000
men. Now the remarkable thing about it
is that this particular fort was built on a river bed. This was the Wadi El Arish, it went right
through Avaris, it was a city of 240,000 armed men on Wadi El Arish. Now look at the place that Saul’s
attacking. He comes to a city of Amalek,
and laid in wait in the river bed. He
has 210,000 men that he’s waging against this city, and if we equate Avaris
with the city then what Saul is doing is he is destroying the stranglehold that
the Hyksos have on Egypt. It turns out
they also have a stranglehold on Palestine and Saul goes down there and
destroys them.
Now the interesting thing is that we have an inscription of a man who
participated in this battle who was an Egyptian by the name of Ahmose; by the
way, this is also an interesting thing. All the Pharaoh’s of the new kingdom,
“mose”, where do you suppose they got that from in their name, it looks very
suspicious, like the Egyptian Pharaohs, this is a historic memorial to
Moses. Now Ahmose is a man who is
credited with setting up the new Kingdom of Egypt, Ahmose was a soldier who
fought alongside another Pharaoh by a similar name, and he records it and he
says this: “I followed the king,” apparently the Egyptians were involved in the
battle to, “I followed the king,” that’s the Pharaoh, “on foot when he rode
abroad in his chariot toward Avaris,” and then instead of saying that Pharaoh
was besieging Avaris he says, “one besieged the city of Avaris, one laid in
wait on the river bed of Avaris.” Now
the interesting thing about this is that the Egyptians in their inscriptions
never give credit to foreign kings. They
always refer to them as “one.” Whoever
this king is in the inscription of Ahmose, he is more powerful than the Pharaoh
because the Pharaoh is under his command.
So if we make the equation that the “one” here is not a mysterious
person at all, it’s Saul of the Bible, then we have an astounding historical fact
that has been lost in history, that Saul was the man who liberated Egypt. Here you have one of the great out workings
of the Abrahamic Covenant. This was a
fringe benefit, Saul didn’t deliberately liberate Egypt, he just went down
there to liberate his own country and he clobbered this place, and as a result
Egypt was also free of the tremendous yoke of the Hyksos. And Saul came to the city and he laid in
wait, and if it’s the same battle it took him a year or two to accomplish it.
Verse 6, “And Said unto the Kenites,” who are a group of people,” and
said get out of the way, because I’m coming in, and I’ll give you a choice, and
notice he says, “Go, depart, get you down from among the Amalekites, lest I
destroy you with them, for ye showed kindness to all the children of Israel,
when they came up out of Egypt. So the
Kenites departed from among the Amalekites.”
Now keep in mind the Biblical view of history. God looks upon our ancestors and the United
States today is faced with situations in history that are a direct product of
our own ancestors. That God is, as it
were saying, Americans, I treat you this way because of your fathers, and it’s
the same thing here. These Kenites were
given blessing because of something that was done generations before. I have often said America rides on the
blessings of her Puritan fathers. We are
still riding on the coattails of the Puritans, regardless of what some jerk
says in the college classroom that can’t stand Puritans. The reason why college professors can’t stand
Puritans is because they can’t stand great people, and when you have a small
person they always have to malign great people; it’s the mark of a small
person. So we depend upon our ancestors,
and notice the Kenites are treated proportionately to how their forefathers
handled Israel.
Verse 7, “And Saul smote the Amalekites from Havilah until thou come to
Shur, that is over against the border of Egypt.” It fits perfectly with the Hyksos fort. [8] And he took Agag, the king of the
Amalekites, alive, and utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the
sword.” Now look at this, remember when
I took you back to Numbers, what was one of the first kings of the
Amalekites? Agag. Who’s the last king of the Amalekites? Agag.
Who was the first king of the Hyksos?
Apophis. Who was the second king
of the Hyksos. Apophis. Now is it a
coincidence that we have two different people in history occupying the same
geographical area, started off with a king with very similar names and ending
with kings of very similar names. Does
it strike you as a coincidence that they both occupied the same city, both had
the same kind of population. Both ran
into the same general situations in regards to both Israel and Egypt. Some would say pure coincidence; Velikovsky
would say there’s an identity here and I think he’s right.
Now in verse 9 we have the sparing.
“But Saul and the people spared Agag, and the best of the sheep,” and
noitice what they did, “the best of the sheep, and of the oxen, and of the
fatlings, and the lambs, and all that was good, and would not utterly charam,” see the word “utterly destroy,”
it’s the Hebrew word charam again,
which means to ban, to totally destroy, “but everything that was vile and
refuse, that they charam-ed [utterly
destroyed].” Now what does that suggest
to you? It suggests to you that the
people approached the situation and selected out what they would and would not
judge. This is always typical of human
good.
Why do we bring human good in at this point? Because no matter who the Amalekites are in
history, no matter who they are, as far as God’s Word is concerned they are
always set up as a picture of the flesh of the believer, as a picture of the
flesh, particularly as Satan would motivate the flesh. Israel does not meet the Amalekites until
after they are redeemed. When does a
believer struggle with his flesh? After
he becomes a Christian, when he wants the sanctification and growth, then the
flesh becomes an issue with him, [can’t understand words] satanic energization
of the flesh. So the Amalekites are a
picture of this and God here is ordering the extermination of the flesh,
similar for His desire for each of us to eliminate –R learned behavior patterns
that we have picked up. God wants all of
them eliminated. But if you have human
good, what are you going to do? You’re
going to have two sets of –R learned behavior patterns, here they are, one
you’ll say these are the good ones, and these are the bad ones, and if you’re a
typical legalistic type you’ll pick all the bad ones, well these are immorality
and a few other ones, and the good things are like we depend on gimmicks for
our church, we will have all sorts of fund raising gimmicks instead of relying
on grace, we’ll put on a good front and have lots of human viewpoint that is
good, and eliminate the Bible; all sorts of things that the community at large
would accept. And it’s the same thing
here, God says charam it, I don’t
want any of it. And so what do believers
do? They pick and choose, they’re just
like the liberals toward the Scripture, pick and choose. And so we pick the –R learned behavior
patterns we want to hold onto because they’re good, and eliminate the ones that
are bad. So they do this.
Now verse 10, the confrontation with Samuel. This, by the way, is the third and final
failure recorded of Saul. It’s really
something that in this tremendous military endeavor Saul accomplished so much;
he really accomplished a tremendous thing here.
He really did slaughter most of the Amalekites, the last time we meet
the Amalekites David cleans the rest of them up, but Saul does a wonderful
thing here, and yet he is not given by God’s Word. The thing that God’s Word looks at is a
violation of the charam order, the
human good, his sense of mercy, his sense of decency got in the way of the
Word.
Now Samuel comes and he announces the judgment of God, verse 11, one of
those strange passage that deal with God’s change of mind. “It repents Me that I have set up Saul to be
king; for he is turned back from following Me, and has not performed My
commandments. And it grieved Samuel, and
he cried unto the LORD all night.”
Several things that you want to notice in verse 11. First of all, notice the repentance of
God. God is a personal God. And I think some of us have taken the
attribute of immutability, which means that God is never changing, God does not
change, He is immutable; He doesn’t change insofar as His character is
concerned, but God does personally respond to us in history, and this means
that you as a believer, if you have accepted Christ you are a believer and that
gives you authentication to come before God and argue with Him in prayer. You have a right to discuss with God in
prayer, to lay a petition to Him and insist that He fulfill it. He may give you a “no” answer but on the
other hand, you may have a response too.
Now Samuel does this. He sees
that God is changing His mind and so it “grieves Samuel and he cried unto the
LORD all night.” He said Lord, this is
not right, I do not want you to do this, and he tries to do something here that
Moses tried and was successful in Exodus 34.
But Samuel is not going to be successful here because apparently what
has happened, and this is interesting, that Samuel admires Saul personally;
Samuel has become a very close friend of Saul’s. And from the human point of view Saul is an
attractive man. From what I’ve said
don’t get the wrong impression, if Saul would walk into this congregation
tonight he would probably be classed as an outstanding believer. And Samuel loved Saul, and he liked him, he
was fun to be around, he was jovial, he was a good friend to have. And when he gets this order come down from
God and God says all right, that’s it, I’m kicking him out of the office, this
grieving of Samuel means that he is just shook up. And it takes him all night to regain his
composure; it takes him hours and hours and hours to work this thing out before
the Lord.
But I also want you to see a principle; a principle of leadership. Samuel cries in private but when he is
finished with the Lord in private he goes out there and he nails Saul to the
wall. And this goes for any good solid
leader. Leaders have feelings; leaders
always have feelings; Samuel was the leader here and he had a lot of [can’t
understand word] feelings but there comes a time when pastors and other people
can’t let people see their feelings. And
on the surface they seem to be very hard and rocky, and on the surface they
seem to be that they don’t care about anything and so forth, somebody could
drop dead and they wouldn’t care. That’s
not true, that’s not true at all. And
here you have Samuel on the surface is absolutely hard-nosed when it comes to
verse 12 and after, but I want you to know that before he faced Saul he had an
all night prayer meeting over it, it grieved him so much. And not only that, but if you turn to chapter
16:1 you read of the fact that after he did this it also grieved him for days
and days and days. Samuel did not get
over this quickly; it was a tremendous personal blow. But between 16:1 and 15:11 you’re not going
to see any of Samuel’s personal feelings because Samuel is a good leader.
Now in verse 12 you see the public image of the man. “And when Samuel rose early to meet Saul in
the morning, it was told Samuel, saying, Saul came to Carmel, [and, behold, he
set him up a place, and is gone about, and passed on, and gone down to
Gilgal.]” So he goes to Carmel and verse
13, up comes Saul, this is a beautiful sentence. “And Samuel came to Saul. And Saul said unto him, Blessed be thou of
the LORD; I have performed the commandment of the LORD.” Pin it right on here Samuel, Distinguished
Service Medal, I’m ready for it. And
this shows some interesting steps that have occurred since the second failure
of Saul. When you look at chaos in the
heart, remember the first step is negative volition toward God’s Word; the
second one is darkness where the illuminating ministry of the Spirit begins to
fade out in our life. We suck in human
viewpoint and what’s the next step. We
have hatred toward the Lord and toward people. We saw that begin to develop in
the second failure. Remember how hatred,
full of hatred and revenge that Saul was.
Part of all this upper layer of carnality that can accumulate is not
only spiritual dullness but scar tissue begins to develop over the conscience
so that the conscience can’t even tell when he’s doing right and wrong any
more. And I believe if you gave Saul a
lie detector test at verse 13 he would sincerely believe that he had followed
the order of God, right here.
And here’s what has happened, and going back to the structure of the
soul, the psychology of the soul we have to remember that the mind can be in
antagonism to your conscience and when you are no negative volition your
conscience is saying no, no, no, no, no, and your mind is cranking out human
good. And it’s trying to create a wall
so that your conscience won’t print it any more. This is called scar tissue porosis in Ephesians, and what it means
is that you honestly can’t believe something.
You honestly have no way of believing it, and so when we talk about this
thing here in verse 13, Saul is sincere, I want you to notice this, he is
absolutely sincere. “Blessed be thou of
the LORD; I have performed” it. I know
what you told me, I clobbered the Amalekites.
And verse 14, if you’re interested in counseling, this is one of the
most powerful ways of counseling. You
notice how Samuel proceeds. He waits
until he gets empirical evidence, this is a good thing for parents too, when
your kid misbehaves don’t come up to him and say did you do that? Of course the kid is going to lie and say he
didn’t do that; just hold back a little bit until you get some evidence and
then instead of saying did you do that, you say what did you do at this
particular point with all this and so the kid knows it’s all over. And this way you present all the evidence and
you lay it out front, there’s no hiding, there’s no lying, nothing else; it’s
all out in the open. And this is what
Samuel says. Oh you did, I hear
something Saul, and then he goes on with the empirical evidence.
Verse 14, “And Samuel said, What meaneth, then, this bleating of the
sheep in mine ears, and the lowing of the oxen which I hear?” I thought we told you to go and charam the whole thing, what’s this
noise. [15] “And Saul said, They,” “they,” always somebody else, “they” the
people, “have brought them from the Amalekites; for the people spared the best
of the sheep and of the oxen, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God; and the rest
we have utterly destroyed.” Now Saul may
have thought that but you get the impression from verse 9 that the people
brought the best to keep for themselves.
Now Saul might have had a lot of pious ideas about what they were going
to do with it, but Samuel, in verse 16 cuts off the discussion very quickly.
Verse 16, “Then Samuel said unto Saul, Stay, and I will tell you what
the LORD has said to me this night.” Now
that’s a very sweet translation and it doesn’t correspond, of course, to what the
Hebrew says. Any time there’s a strong
word in the Scripture these translators go all over the board trying to avoid
it. Now there’s a word that corresponds
to our English word “damn.” And Samuel
has used it twice, once when the people
were talking about Samuel, you going to pray for us, “I’ll be damned if I
will,” and that’s exactly what it means and that’s the way it should be
translated. Now this is a word that
means to fade out and it means in the hiphil, it means I’m going to make you
fade out or shut your mouth. Now that’s
the translation and that’s the way it should be translated. In other words Saul is sitting there
blubbering about oh, the people did this, the people did that, I’ve obeyed the
Lord, will you shut your mouth and listen.
And that’s exactly the way Samuel comes up to Saul, just turn it off and
you just listen to me. Now there’s a man
addressing the king; what gives him the right to talk to the king that way? Because he’s a prophet. Want a more modern or recent illustration in
history? Read the biography of John Knox
and how he talked to Mary, the Queen of Scotland; he walked into court and
called her a whore in front of her whole group.
And nobody laid a hand on John Knox either because he had so many
believers in Scotland behind him that the queen couldn’t do anything about
it. She wanted to kill him but she
couldn’t do anything about it because Knox had preached the Word so much and he
had such a fantastic following the Queen would have been assassinated, so he
walked in and called her a whore, which she was. There wasn’t anything spiritual about
it.
Now what gave him authority to do that; he had backing, and he was a
prophet and he was talking Scripturally from the Word. Now here it is, it means shut your mouth so you
can listen to what I have to say. If
you’ve ever been in the service you’ve probably had this said to you several
times and this is the kind of thing that that word means and that’s the way it
always is used in Scripture, elsewhere, except every time it’s used they’ve got
a different idea; one is called “stay,” the other is “please be quiet,” and all
these sweet little things. Do you know
why these translations are made this way, I’m convinced. Because the guys that translate the Hebrew,
the scholars have never really lived that kind of a life. And they never had anybody say “will you shut
up,” to them, and so when they hit something like this they just don’t know the
English word. And this is the bad thing
about translators who have sheltered existence.
[16b, “And he said unto him, Say on.”]
Verse 17, “And Samuel said, When thou was little in your own sight, wast
thou not made the head of the tribes of Israel, and the LORD anointed thee king
over Israel,” now this is a crack at one of Saul’s problems of human good. Do you remember I have pointed out on several
occasions that human good never inspires confident followers, the people always
have an intuition about this guy. He’s
not really the camp. And as a result of
it the people never really get too excited about him. The result is that Saul,
remember how we left him off last time in verse 45, he wanted to kill Jonathan
and the people talked him out of it. Now
watch this trait develop a little further.
Now the people evidently have talked him into the spoils and Samuel
pounds him right here. He says “you were
little in your own sight,” in other words, you didn’t fill the office that God
gave you. God told you to get in that
office and exercise authority, not sit around and let people tell you what to
do. And you are responsible for it Saul,
so this is how he hits him, right here at the point of authority.
Verse 18, “And the LORD sent thee on a journey, and said, Go and utterly
destroy the sinners, the Amalekites, and fight against them until they be
consumed,” he repeats the order with the word, “until they are consumed,” that
is a synonym for charam, meaning to
conduct holy war. Verse 19, And you did
not obey, “Why, then, didst thou not obey the voice of the LORD, but did fly
upon the spoil, and did evil in the sight of the LORD? [20] And Saul said unto
Samuel,” now look at this one. Look at
this one, just like verse 13, parents often have this excuse, well I did what
you told me, in other words, the room might be filled with six inches of debris
and tell their kid to pick it up and after he gets through with some effort
it’s reduced to two inches and you say this room isn’t picked up, and oh yeah,
I did what you told me. What’s all this
stuff? It’s the same kind of thing. And here we have Saul say, “Yea, I have
obeyed the voice of the LORD, and have gone the way which the LORD sent me, and
have brought Agag, the king of Amalek, and have utterly destroyed the
Amalekites. [21] But the people,” you see, not me, the people, “the people took
of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the chief of the things which should have been
utterly destroyed, to sacrifice unto the LORD thy God in Gilgal.”
Now we’re going to conclude with verses 22-23 which should properly be
translated as poetry. This is a psalm,
you might say if you were writing a drama this would be the last place you’d
have the orchestra starting in with a song.
But Samuel gives his prophecy in a psalm to Saul, and it is a song
which, verses 22-23 form the backbone for all prophecy in God’s Word from this
point forward. All the prophets are
going to make this distinction. Be careful, because liberals have seized upon
this verse to undermine Scripture. Let’s
read the two verses together.
Verse 22, “And Samuel said, Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt
offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey
is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams.” Then verse 23 is dedicated to all people of
human good, “For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, stubbornness is as
iniquity and idolatry. Because thou hast rejected the word of the LORD, He hath
also rejected thee from being king.”
We won’t finish but we want to clarify the principles here in verse
22-23; the idea is volition and works. A
person has an attitude toward the Lord; it’s negative. He can counterfeit works, which we will call
human good. In the Old Testament these
were sacrifices. A sacrifice is overt
behavior; overt behavior can be from a multitude of motives. It can be from –V, it can be from +V and what
Samuel is saying here is look Saul, God does not delight in burnt offerings as
much as He does in obeying the voice of the Lord. This does not mean, like liberals say, and
like Bible is literature courses insist, that positive volition is the all
important thing and sacrifice is not included.
That’s not what it’s saying. It’s
simply saying that looking at it from the standpoint of over behavior you can’t
tell the motive behind the overt behavior.
This is not a license to violate the Law of Israel by not
sacrificing. The point is, to get it on
positive volition.
Now why does this become such a
critical assault on human good. Because
when negative volition does the same act, it’s human good. Let’s look at giving. It’s good to give, everybody thinks. Positive volition, negative volition. Positive volition they give and that counts
as divine good, that’s credited to his account because he gave with the proper
motive. You take the same act, giving,
negative volition, I’m going to give because Joe down here has a bigger pledge
than I do and I have to show him up, or we want 100% participation or
something, and so here’s negative volition giving out of the wrong motive,
human good. Is the act the same? You bet it is. Then where is the difference. There’s no difference on the outside, but on
the inside there’s a tremendous difference.
And this is why Samuel says what he does here. Now listen, if you have to choose between the
overt behavior pattern, don’t try to do that, you just concentrate on the inner
mental attitude.
Now this is the way, if you are following up on a new Christian, you
don’t go stuffing down the throat of a new believer all of your pet things;
even though some of your pet things may be very sound and very Scriptural. You concentrate on getting that believer
squared away on positive volition and you clarify to him how he can get back in
fellowship through 1 John 1:9. You give
him some of the basic mechanics of how to take care of himself spiritually and
never mind what he is supposed to do, he will get that from the Scripture. The Holy Spirit will illuminate him. He may sit there and you be a non-smoker and
he may sit there with a cigar and blow it all in your face while you’re telling
him about Jesus Christ. And you may
explain the gospel as you gasp your way through this thing and finally make it
to the point where you clarify the issue and he becomes a believer.
But later on you go back to him and he says, hey, do you see this thing
I got out of Scripture, boy, that’s great, and he’s still smoking, all right,
you don’t make an issue out of that. Of
course it’s not taking care of his body, but if you make an issue out of
something like that, you are going to get him conscious of all this stuff and you’re
setting him up for legalism and human good.
You constantly present the issues, the great issues of who Jesus Christ
is, what Christ has done for him on the cross, how he can be restored to
fellowship, what 1 John 1:9 says, what you have to do in order to grow
spiritually, the techniques of prayer, how to be filled with the Holy
Spirit. All these things, that’s what
you concentrate on. If he asks you about
these things you can direct him to passages where he can apply the principles
and see for himself, but don’t ever try to clobber him with something, to have
that person do something to please you.
Don’t have somebody do something just
to please you. Get to the Word
of God and make that the issue and the other things will take care of
themselves. Always will, always
have.
Verse 23, one word to clarify. The word “rebellion” means to rebel
against God and disbelieve His Word and it does not mean, necessarily,
immorality because Saul did not commit any moral sins here, what moral sin did
Saul commit? None. In fact, if the average clergyman was around
watching they would have said Saul, congratulations, you didn’t carry out that
immoral order of Jehovah, in other words, your morals are better than God’s and
rebellion doesn’t mean that; rebellion means you failed to believe the Word in
some area of your life. This is the word
that is used in the Old Testament when they came to Kadesh-barnea and didn’t
have any water, it’s the same word, they disbelieved. And failure to apply the Word in your life is
worse than the sin of witchcraft, according to Samuel, and you know how much
God doesn’t have any tolerance for this kind of thing because it leads to
demonism.
And “stubbornness,” now that’s a word that has to be changed, the word
does not mean “stubborn” it means pushiness, it’s the opposite. It doesn’t mean God is trying to pull you
along and you’ve got the breaks on. It
means that you’re trying to push Him; pushiness means you’re trying to cram
human good down God’s mouth is what you’re going. God says I want divine good, believer, and
you say No you don’t, you’re going to get human good from me. And this is the pushiness here; “pushiness is
worse than iniquity and idolatry.”
Next week we’ll finish up with the problem of the rejection of the king
from the nation.